These are new pages to catalogue Nigel's "Updates" on life in Trindad - much appreciated by those of us far from home... They are a wonderful mixture of reportage and personal observation and I am really sorry I lost so many of them in a stupid software glitch last year!

I had saved the whole lot, right from the beginning of the Pointe-a-Pierre web site, so if anyone has any of those old ones and would like to email them to me, I'd be really happy! The ones below begin in 2001.

Nigel's own web site (from where these pages are taken) is @: http://www.papmemories.net/

Wednesday, December 26, 2001 11:17 am Subject: Season's Greetings.

Greetings to you all. Can't say that I'm sorry to see the end of 2001 even though these days a year means a lot more than it did before.

We have had busy and hectic years before, but somehow the events and activities were linear and the overlap between them were always short and quite manageable. This year we were juggling multiple events and activities at the same time that really wore us down since many of them were not pleasant.

Overriding all of that though was good health, the birth of our grandson Andrew to Stewart and Laura....completely changed our lives, the engagement of middle son Bruce to Renee.....if there was a shop that you could go to to choose a second daughter-in-law she is the one we would have chosen, and last but not least, the move to our new home that is such a super place that the anguish of leaving San Fernando was short lived.

Allan coming home for Christmas and being able to see him every day instead of the old San Fernando ratio of three nights in one hundred and twenty as we saw in summer.....off liming in PoS the other 117.

With the move came an opportunity to make new friends and catch back up with the friends that moved in to PoS before we did, we are now near to both Donna and my families especially Donna's mum and my super nieces (love ya girls), and through the election campaign to get to know the wonderful people of Paramin and upper Maraval.

People who live at 2,000 feet above sea level in cool calm surroundings, who maintain a closeness with the natural environment and their surroundings, have strong family and social bonds, and have the absolutely breathtaking view of all Trinidad that they have, must be cool calm and as nice as they are.....look forward to strengthening my ties with this wonderful group.

Even though at much reduced frequency due to a number of things, the reconnection with the people of PaP past, and the whole PaP Internet site has been a continuing source of happiness to me........we were really very luck to have had that opportunity back then, and the Internet has provided us the means by which some parts of it can be renewed through contact with old friends and names long gone from the conscious.

No where was this more strongly felt than seeing Christine Coombs when she visited......Christine was a very dear friend of mine even after the young romance was over and who completely disappeared for 30-something years and then reappeared through the PaP site. Always via e-mail proxy through her sister Caroline or snail mail direct until the 'phone call that said...we are in Tobago. What a feeling...hard to describe......no exciting illusion that we could recapture what we once had but a great sense of happiness that she was real and that therefore the whole PaP experience was real. It kind of legitimized the deep feelings I have for the memories of the time. When we visited PaP, it felt strange to see this real person in a very real house where many years before the same real person our friends, and myself shared many happy moments in that same real house....again no sense of going back but certainly a great gladness that she was here and that she was OK, and a great sense of having shared something wonderful.

We miss Helen, Gwyneth, the O'Connor's and the Skinners but see enough of them and keep in touch by 'phone enough to be happy. I have been in touch with Tubby Elsom's granddaughter Kathi Crowhurst who lives in Malawi. It is clear that the tremendous person that he was is still felt by his family and that he has passed on the niceness that we knew to those who came after him......have enjoyed the exchange of e-mails with Kathi.

Heard from Lynda Hubbard (Wood) who lived in a village near to Penny Lewis and I look forward to hearing from Penny or Lynda again. Got a lovely card and some super pics from Angela Edwards showing herself, Susan Martin, Leslie Cook, Angela's sister Liz and her husband Brian and the Inglis sisters Kathleen and Annie. Will post them soon. Also got some great old pics from Lanny Govia and hope to have all of them posted as soon as I get the site back up......not sure that Crosswinds is not signaling that because of the size I should be paying for space.

Peter Hughes is sailing through rough waters in the lee of the tragedy that struck one of his cruise boats during a hurricane in Belize this year. The loss of a boat with loss in human life itself was a big blow to Peter and the fallout after the tragedy has really sat heavily on his shoulders. He needs our support.

Despite the efforts of the politicians to slow things down the country progresses on many fronts......our economy will grow next year at 3.8 % compared to the world expectation of 2.6%, and the growth is beginning to come in areas that inject money directly back in to the neediest parts of the economy.

Nowhere is this more evident than the proliferation of small business that are cropping up all over the place in areas previously out-of-bounds and by people who traditionally have felt themselves to be barred from business activities. Much of it centers around craft and food but is creating a widening ring of hope among people who previously felt that the stereotypes and traditional prejudices were true.

The steelbands have always been community based organizations but now they are year-round employers and generate the people volumes sufficient to attract many of the small itinerant vendors that make a living out of the food and craft. There is some US$2.0 billion in direct foreign investment earned by the current government waiting to get started as projects notch upward......with this will come medium term reduction in the unemployment figures to below double digit levels for the first time in a very very long time.

There is a sense that the whole country has cooled of on important issues like race, and class and as hope grows the cooling-off continues. We hear about crime and more murders this year than ever before, and because we are a small island it all gets very personalized, but the statistics show that a high percentage of the murders were gang related and usually dropping out of drug turf wars. In an even higher percentage of the cases, the victim was known to the perp' and or there was prior incident or contact.

No question that things are not like they were way back when but nothing quite as bad as is being bandied about. The downside is the continuing effort of the loosing politicians to leverage the ignorance of the general population on things like the constitution and fact behind much of the alleged corruption.

On one side a person is pilloried for being straightforward and saying it like it is and on the other the master of smooth talk gets all the plaudits. This message has been put together bit by bit over three days and I have just learned from the TV that old smoothie has been appointed Prime Minister by the President despite equal numbers of seats won in the recent election campaign. A lose/lose situation for the President admittedly, but a decision that reveals his sense of bias and predilection to revenge and spite.....how else can one think when at the end of a tied election and where there is a sitting Prime Minister who earned more votes overall that the opposing hopeful, the president, with the power of one clause in the constitution, which incidentally has a few precedent requirements none of which were met, selects one of the two against the grain of propriety and catering to wishes of those who were offended by the behavior of the other. When one remembers that the President cannot be removed this new found power becomes a frightening sword in the hands of a non-elected official.

The news has kinda dampened the sense of rejuvenation that I once again saw at the scene of a pretty bad smash up on the South-bound lane of the highway that joins PoS and San Fernando on my way home this afternoon (Christmas eve). I arrived just minutes after it happened and by the time I got over the highway to the scene, a plainclothes police sergeant had already taken control and was advising the EHS dispatcher on traffic conditions and numbers for transport.

We started to work together on injury assessment but never really got going as the first HSE unit screamed in just three minutes later, followed by a second and third all within ten minutes of the actual wreck.......the first uniformed police officers got there somewhere in-between and the red trucks rolled up just after the last EHS unit pulled in.

You might wonder why these stories keep coming up in the updates but to me they represent the fulfillment of a world class vision to have such a professional service, to have accomplished near world class performance and behavior of the professionals involved and at the same time no loud shouting and bossing around by the uniformed people........and in typical form, our village mentality sees matters like these as wide human issues and civies are allowed to contribute........I guess we don't yet have enough lawyers on the prowl. While the paramedics worked we comforted and looked after those not as badly hurt, made 'phone calls for them on our cell-phones etc, helped gather names for the EMTs and all sorts of things that made the operation much smoother and a far more human an affair.

Its now Christmas morning...Merry Christmas to you all.......to those who the sun has not yet risen on have a great day, and those for whom the day has ended already......hope that you had a wonderful time.

We went to a great Christmas eve party last night and the ex PaP team was well represented...no digi-pics I'm afraid. Mrs.Haskel was there with daughter Helen Edghill, Annette Telfer (Moleneux), Linda Krogh (Maingot) and yours truly........great stuff!!!

Up to the middle of November our weather had been spectacular......warm sunny days and cool dry nights but with only about 50% of the rainfall required to get us through next year and then someone opened the spiggot and we have had almost wall to wall rain ever since.

You know what happens with big concentrations of rain....floods on the Eastern end of the Caroni plains!!! Suspect that we will have a late start to the dry season and hope that it doesn't try to show off and put the wet season in its place.

Well folks, all the very best to you all, have a very merry Christmas rich with new found joys, and may 2002 give you the time and space to continue to enjoy them.

Regards Nigel.